Things about management and business on a smaller scale, and economics on a larger one.
Dave point out that some stuff going on at LinkedIn which led him to mention this Business 2.0 article.
No, I don’t want to talk about Sundays at the Mountain View Starbucks—I guess I used to go to the other Starbucks—I just want to nitpick two things I read in the article.
[My two nitpicks after the jump.]Continue reading
Mischa mentioned that a bunch of Web 2.0 companies wanted to get in on the whole SuperBowl ad thing. Being Web 2.0 and not Web 1.0, they put their commercials on YouTube. Here is one from “the bunch of monkeys” I used to work for:
Their budget? $50 for the bar tab. Sure beats wasting 2 million bucks.
Web 2.0: Web 1.0, only cheaper.
I saw this article on the front page of the Merc today. Someone is proposing to ban sales of incandescent light bulbs by 2012 (to replace them with CFLs).
Even though they wreck havoc on photography, I only buy CFLs instead of incandescents. But does anyone else think this is a backwards way to go about transitioning?
[Law or Market after the jump]Continue reading
A while back, Stuart quoted:
“You will always be known for the people you’ve hired.”
—Rikk Carey, 2006
It’s a great quote. It’s amazingly insightful. It’s also a very dangerous one because it has horrible consequences that are fundamental if ignored:
[My thoughts after the jump.]Continue reading
Ringo started out as Monster’s attempt at making a social network. This makes a lot of sense: like mashups, social networking can be seen as a possible disruptive technology threat to Monster’s core business: job search (a form of vertical search).
I’ve already mentioned job mashups in the past, but last year’s breakout success of LinkedIn shows that you can build a sustainable business model around job-related social networking.
In light of this I was shocked to notice the new homepage of Ringo:
Look familiar?
Anecdotally, this makes sense because the only person I know on Ringo uses it to share photos with me. From that and their clever spam of me—in a holiday promotional e-mail they mapped my friend’s photo onto an image in order to sell me a custom calendar—I would guess that photos form the majority of Ringo’s income.
But Flickr already rules this niche which is one among potentially many in photography: for a dump of your cameraphone photos there is photobucket; for professionals there is smugmug. This is not counting the fact that social networking sites like Facebook already have passable photo sharing built in and sites with interesting ideas like riya have abandoned photosharing for vertical search. Why make another Flickr?
But more importantly, Monster is a job site. Shouldn’t they be dealing with LinkedIn? Talk about losing your focus!
A recent article in the New York Times discusses a bunch of Google competitors.
Is this me or does this sound so 2002?
I wonder if “out-googling” Google is such a great idea in the first place. If barrier to entry is truly as low as the article claims, then why do it at all? It seems that anything you carve isn’t sustainable.
I’m no business genius, but I prefer the Prego’s Approach.
[Getting from spaghetti sauce to internet search by way of some dancing bunnies after the jump.]Continue reading
[Microsoft organization impact after the jump.]Continue reading
I had an argument today where a kid at work was spouting the near-complete repertoire of game console myths. Here is an annotated list of facts:
Microsoft lost at least $4 billion on the original Xbox (not $2 billion as many claim).
Microsoft has rather consistently sold just south of 2 million Xbox 360 units a quarter, every quarter since its release. (I believe they might just barely break 2 million units this quarter.)
Yes, that’s right, the Playstation 2, though six years old, is still the #1 selling console worldwide. Also the Wii has almost caught the Xbox 360 even though it was not available in Japan or Europe and for only 11 days in the United States and Canada!
Microsoft had expected the Xbox 360 to be profitable by mid 2007, but that is behind schedule and they won’t turn a profit until 2008.
[Reasons why after the jump.]
Continue reading
Blake Robinson is the lone pro-Zune voice in the CrunchGear wilderness. (Probably because they weren’t bribed like the Gizmodo folks were.) When commenting about their new commercial, I wondered if he’s found any Zune love out there.
An interesting thing he mentions in passing: he leaves the WiFi off because of battery drain. Remember five years ago CmdrTaco uttered the fabled words about the iPod release:
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
Replied to a MacRumors discussion:
I have no idea where you got that one from. The original Xbox never made a profit. Microsoft is deliberately selling the Xbox 360 at a loss to capture marketshare. However, the PS3 and Ninetindo Wii are selling like hotcakes, are latest big things, and have the buzz. The best laid plans …
[My reply after the jump]Continue reading